Armband Alert: 06/20/12, Simmons, MS

Please wear a black wrist band tomorrow, 06/20/12, in silent protest of the execution of Gary Carl Simmons, Jr. by the government of the state of Mississippi. Mr. Simmons will be poisoned to death for the 1996 murder of Jeffery Wolfe.

Gary Carl Simmons turned himself in for this crime. His actions were outrageous; he dismembered his victim and scattered many of the pieces into a bayou in New Orleans. The depravity of the crime is all the evidence one needs to know that Mr. Simmons is mentally ill and should be in treatment, not in an execution chamber. Mississippi must call off this execution in the interest of humanity and justice!

I can understand how you wanted to have this stopped. However, from what I’ve read, Simmons had planned this murder…and he also raped a woman and put her in a metal box!! What about the families, friends and other loved ones of the victims??? He didn’t seem to show much remorse for what he did.

You make the important point that the victims in these cases sometimes get overlooked. Our hearts go out to them in the loss of their loved ones. The Armband Protest Against the Death Penalty maintains a relationship with an organization called Murder Victims Familes for Reconciliation, which acknowledge that trading a life for a life does little to assuage the families’ profound sense of loss. In many cases, as in this one, the judgement and responsibility of the offender are compromised by severe mental disease or injury. Finally, the mixed messages these continuing executions send is that while it is O.K. for us to take the life of the offender, it is not O.K. for him or her to have taken someone’s life.